A Prototype of Ducted-Fan Aerial Robot with Redundant Control Surfaces

Abstract

This work presents the aero-mechanical characteristics and the control design for a prototype of ducted-fan aerial robot tailored to achieve advanced robotics operations requiring physical interaction with the environment and high maneuverability. The distinguishing feature of the proposed aerial configuration is the redundant number of aerodynamic surfaces which can be employed by the controller. A control strategy is then proposed in which control allocation techniques exploit this redundancy to improve the accuracy and the efficiency of the aerodynamic forces and torques generation mechanism while simplifying the overall feedback design. The effectiveness of the proposed approach and the performances of the ducted-fan prototype have been demonstrated by means of flight experiments.